Archive: Blogging

Hi everyone, and welcome back to my blog! This is it — it’s official. This is a proper relaunch. And to prove it I have about a dozen posts already prepared, ready to be whipped out whenever I hit a dry patch.

I was actually hoping to launch it a few weeks earlier. But the process of redesigning the blog took much longer than I had anticipated. I must have had the original ideas for this design way back in September, and I have been working on it on and off ever since. Obviously it went on the back burner when I moved into my new flat, which took up a huge amount of my time between December and February.

Nonetheless, I expected that I would be able to put together the design quite quickly. One of my original intentions was to do it properly, with good accessibility, a mobile stylesheet, and some HTML5 and CSS3. I saw it as a good learning experience, and an opportunity to learn about the sort of code I will have to start using at work.

In the end, I have ended up having to basically re-learn how to develop a WordPress theme, due to major changes in versions 2.7 and 3.0. That was much harder than I anticipated, and it was only after borrowing a book from my colleague Gareth Saunders that I finally cracked it (sort of)!

It got to the stage where I have just had to work as quickly as possible to get the theme finished and ready for public display. As such, most of the fancy stuff I wanted to implement has not been started on, never mind finished. And the theme lacks the final polish. You will probably notice a few inconsistencies in the way some elements of the design work. I will be hoping to iron this all out in the coming weeks.

Content-wise, I anticipate that the blog will be quite different to what has been here before. But I knew that all along. That was part of the reason for my hiatus over the winter. But you will see what’s in store later on.

In the next few weeks there will be a few posts that would normally have appeared in either November or December. The normal sort of end-of-year stuff. For instance, I never got round to writing about the end of last year’s Formula 1 season (!), nor did I write a music roundup, which I have done every year since I started blogging way back in 2002.

Please let me know what you think of the design. As I say, I’m still working on it and am open to any suggestions.

6 comments

Well that didn’t last long

1 December 2010 19:37

Categories: Admin, Blogging, General, Personal

Back already? Yes I am — sort of. It is typical of a “hiatus”. The actual hiatus (which officially began ten days ago) has been much shorted than the month-long awkward silence that preceded it.

But I came to the conclusion quite quickly that I do want to continue blogging. I just don’t know how, or what format it should take. I am still not sure what I want to achieve with it, and what sort of things I want to publish here.

So I have decided to use the month of December as an experiment. I am aiming for the lofty goal of one post a day. Just like an advent calendar! Or something.

Some of these posts will be ones that I meant to write before beginning the hiatus, but didn’t get round to. I will also piece together some unfinished posts to get them out there too. Then there are the traditional end-of-year posts (about music and Formula 1) that I can’t leave out.

I have also come up with a nice idea for a little series of posts, which I feel like I have the energy to write. This is quite an interesting period of my life, and it feels silly not to document it in some way when I have the perfect tool to do so!

Over the course of the month I will be experimenting with styles and subject matters. I want to try and work out what I feel comfortable with, and also what interests the readers.

I am conscious that part of this is down to the fact that I have found myself with a bit more time on my hands this week than I was expecting (I had booked the week off work to move into my new flat, but Snow Week has made progress on this very difficult!). So I may well abruptly disappear again. But for the time being I am in the mood to create and experiment. Feel free to join me.

2 comments

Interesting event: Political Innovation

21 October 2010 13:22

Categories: Blogging, Current affairs, Edinburgh, Internet, Politics, Scotland, Technology

There is an event coming up that will interest a lot of Scottish political bloggers. Political Innovation is taking place on 13 November at the University of Edinburgh’s Informatics Forum.

The Political Innovation project is a series of free-to-attend practical events at which people with ideas on political innovations can meet up with technical experts, journalists, bloggers, politicos and others with an interest in politics and public affairs. The event will allow to find about about innovative projects like these ones. You may even want to get involved in one of them.

It sounds pretty good to me and I plan on attending. It will be a good opportunity for bloggers to meet up and chat with others that are interested in this sort of thing.

As far as I know, it has been a while since there was a bit meetup of Scottish bloggers, and from time to time people ask me when there is going to be another meetup. The political focus of this event might not appeal to everyone, but it sounds like the ideal place for some of us to catch up, as well as meet other interesting people and discuss innovative ideas. Best of all, they will be supplying lunch.